Wednesday, November 26, 2014

From the very overture of Juilliard’s Il Turco in Italia we
are introduced to Prosdocimo, a handsome and sleek author going through a
creative crisis, chewing up and scattering to the wind handwritten notes and
tormentedly pulling out his hair. When the curtain rises, a bright and peaceful
Italian spa (terme) is unveiled, with a disparate cast of characters
(nuns, priests, fancy bourgeoisie, doctors and nurses) leisurely strolling
through the white marble backdrop and palm gardens and drinking water from
crystal mugs. The look is late 1950s down to the last detail. Prosdocimo stands
out, now donning a pair of dark sunglasses and looking more annoyed and lost as
ever, making it very clear that director John Giampietro had a genius
Fellini’s 8 ½-inspired take on Rossini’s Turco. Our operatic
Prosdocimo as the cinematic Guido works brilliantly and effortlessly, since the
original libretto already uses this character in a very meta-theatrical way as
the alter ego of the composer/librettist who is stuck on his newest dramma
giocoso (Ho da fare un dramma buffo / e non trovo l’argomento!) and
functions throughout the opera as narrator punctuating key plot points with
hilarious commentary.

Geronio complains to ProsdocimoPhoto credit: Ruby Washington/NYTimes

From the get-go Prosdocimo tells the public that he cannot find
the right plot idea, some are too sappy, others are too flat (Questo ha
troppo sentimento, / quello insipido mi par). This character was played by
the amazing Polish baritone Szymon Komasa, who proved to be not only a
strong expressive singer, with a manly smooth tone and power to match, but also
an extraordinary actor with charismatic stage presence. Mr. Komasa embodied
Prosdocimo with intense energy, portraying him as the puppet-master who pushes
the rest of the cast to serve his plot points and enthusiastically becomes more and more pleased with himself for how the opera is playing out. Whenever
Mr. Komasa was on stage, even if not singing, he was always doing something
character specific, now taking notes, now coaching and coaxing some other
singers on the side, now intently observing how his ideas play out.

Geronio gets his aura read by the "gypsies"Photo credit: Ken Howard

It is Prosdocimo who introduces (and comments on) the rest of the
cast to the public: there’s a group of gypsies (in this production immigrant
spa-workers) among whom the beautiful and sweet Zaida sings of her lost love.
Next is Fiorilla, a spitfire of a coquettish liberal wife bored after six years
of marriage and flirting left and right, to the despair of her jealous older
husband Geronio. At this point the author rejoices at the great opportunities
offered by a dumb husband and a capricious wife (Un marito-scimunito! / Una sposa-capricciosa! / No: di meglio non si dà). The plot thickens with the arrival of Selim, a sexy
and exotic Turkish prince who immediately attracts (and is attracted by)
Fiorilla but also happens to be Zaida’s long lost lover. The love
triangles and vignettes that gush out of this setting are extremely juicy –
think of the confrontation between Geronio and Selim, where the Turkish prince
tries to convince the cuckold Italian husband to go the Turkish way, where
husbands simply sell off annoying wives (to which Geronio responds that in
Italy it’s customary for the husband to punch the wife-buyer in the nose):

SELIM

D’un bell’uso di Turchia

forse avrai novella intesa:

della moglie che gli pesa

il marito è venditor.

GERONIO

Sarà l’uso molto buono,

ma in Italia è più bell’uso:

il marito rompe il muso

quasi sempre al comprator.

Or else consider the cat fight between Zaida and Fiorilla and the
Act I finale with the two women in a bitter rivalry for the favors of Selim and
calling each other all sorts of names (pettegola, civetta, frasca, sciocca,
impertinente). This was one of the most hilarious scenes of the evening,
when all characters try to placate the women, except for Prosdocimo who is
delighted by the fight and actually incites them to hit harder (Seguitate...via...bravissime… / qua...là...bene; in
questo modo… / azzuffatevi, stringetevi, / graffi...morsi...me la godo…), in this production he even teaches each of them
complementary boxing moves to enhance the drama.

Fiorilla plays hard to getPhoto credit: Ken Howard

Why on earth Il Turco in Italia is not part of standard
repertoire is beyond me. I personally found it way more entertaining than Ilbarbiere di Siviglia. Plot-wise it’s racy and not very politically
correct with a stereotypical polygamous Turk on one end and a wife claiming to
be on the prowl for a thousand lovers on the other, but hey all the more fun. There are no dead
moments as the story moves quickly with many coups de théâtre, one after the
other. Despite the unpolitical correctness of much of the opera, the finale is,
however, a happy one that adds a touch of a morale to the story, as Prosdocimo puts it: “poi finir con un poco di morale.”
The denouement is, in fact, ultimately highly conservative. The love that is
written in the stars is reconstituted between Selim and the gypsy Zaida, and
the husband wins back his wife and marital bliss wins the day.

The philanderers consortPhoto credit: Ruby Washington/NYTimes

The contrast between the duets between the two potential lovers
competing for the Turk’s heart are indicative of the types of love explored in
the story. The sentiment of the “Io mi voglio divertir” duet that
initiates the romance between Fiorilla and Selim is light hearted and selfish. All either of them want to do is have fun. That Selim ends up settling for the deeper long lost love he once had with
Zaida in the duet, “Per la fuga è tutto lesto,” is paralleled to the
eventual breaking down of headstrong and selfish Fiorilla whose husband has to
break her of her philandering flirtatious ways in order to bring her back into
the marital fold. Call it: the taming of the slut.

Fiorilla is free as a birdPhoto credit: Ken Howard

Korean soprano Hyesang Park as Fiorilla was terrific. Her
role entails the most challenging and spectacular singing of the opera and Ms.
Park displayed vocal agility, sheer power and sensational acting as the flirty
yet ultimately repentant wife. Ms. Park’s Italian was excellent and she
distilled the most coquettish tone even in recitatif when saying things like “lo
zucchero e’ bastante?” (is the sugar enough? – for Selim’s coffee). She was
a lot of fun to watch and impressive to hear, delivering a range that went from
comic to tragic, though the comic flirty bits were the best parts, such as when
she punches her husband for being a jealous bore and tells him she’ll punish
him by getting a thousand lovers and by fooling around night and day (Per punirvi aver
vogl’io / Mille amanti ognor d’intorno, / Far la pazza notte e giorno, /
Divertirmi in libertà!), all while blowing kisses to the spa pool boys.
In the scene of her deepest darkest cave in Act II, when Geronio threatens to
leave her and she realizes that as a divorcée she would lose her honor, Ms.
Park poured her heart out and then completely collapsed. Still on the ground
after a long and well-deserved round of applause, she raised her head and
bounced back belting out her next lines. The force of her re-attack here was
arresting and the power of her voice, after such a long aria, was
extraordinary, particularly coming from such a petite frame.

Bass-baritone Michael Sumuelwas
also impressive as Selim. He seemed to be the most experienced singer on stage
(among other things, he sang Masetto in Lyric Opera of Chigago’s season opening
Don Giovanni) and it showed. His was the most extensive role after
Fiorilla’s and he rose to the challenge singing with expressiveness, agility
and great comic tempo. Selim’s duets with Fiorilla were probably the most
enjoyable bel canto singing of the evening. Mezzo Kara Sainz asZaida
was pure romantic sweetness and rendered her reunion duet with her long lost
love Selim particularly touching and heart wrenching. Bass Daniel Miroslaw
as Geronio delivered a solid performance, with great stage presence and the
right amount of slapstick fun.

Maestra Speranza Scappucci

This, our first outing at
Julliard Opera, was a revelation. With the youthful, energetic and gracious Speranza Scappucci at the helm, the whole show ran like precision clockwork. It was
not only impressive but also utterly entertaining and pure Rossinian exuberance.
The prestigious school really showed that it is worth its salt. I’ll take
another dose of these healing waters anytime.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

From
the moment we took our seats, it felt like something extraordinary was
happening: the average age of the public was clearly under 30, which
is about 4 decades younger than the usual crowd at pretty much any opera
performance in NYC, whether mainstream or indie. And it gets better: during the
waltzy overture several patrons were itching to dance in their seats, swinging
heads, shaking shoulders and tapping their feet, which also very unusual from the average
snoozing public. The energetic crowd was not deceived as NY Opera Exchange’s Die
Fledermaus turned out to be a whole lot of fun and an all around highly
entertaining evening at the operetta.

This
was my first “‘Maus” and I was surprised by how much I liked it. It’s truly a
bubbly and lighthearted piece with terrific music and hilarious comic
vignettes. Director Melissa Frey’s decision to present the piece with
recitatifs in English translation and arias sung in the original German was very
successful in keeping the gags alive for the non-German speaking public. While
I am generally a purist when it comes to tampering with the original language
of an opera, in this specific case I found NY Opera Exchange’s to be a welcome
compromise between respect for the source material and approachability. Also,
the original itself already had recitatif bits in English, Italian, French and
Russian, representing the cosmopolitan hodge-podge of languages spoken in
Vienna at the end of the XIX century. So, expanding a bit the English parts did
not sound too awkward.

The
plot boils down to a complicated prank to the detriment of an entitled (and a
bit dense) nobleman orchestrated by a vindictive friend of his (the eponymous “bat”
of the title). A broad and disparate cast of characters is somehow involved in
the scheme, including the nobleman’s flirty wife, her ex-lover (an Italian
tenor), a maid cum actress, an extravagant party-throwing Russian prince, a
prison guard and a lousy lawyer. The director’s notes state that the action was
set in Venice (instead of Vienna) and the piece got a commedia dell’arte
spin. Quite honestly I did not get that much of an Italian flavor from the
production but little matters as I found it highly effective in conveying
the effervescent spirit of the operetta.

Rosalinde
(the flirty wife) is by far the character with the most stage time and the most
challenging and extensive singing. Soprano Margaret Newcomb was
outstanding and the strongest singer on stage, both in her solo arias and in
the numerous duets, trios and other ensemble pieces. Her acting was on point
too, with a snobbish and elegant flair representing Rosalinde as a two-faced
yet charming woman one cannot entirely dislike. Her husband, Gabriel von Einstein,
was played by tenor Kevin Delaney, who had outstanding acting skills and
great comic timing but unfortunately the strength of his singing did not match
his other talents, particularly in ensemble pieces when he tended to get
drowned by the orchestra and the other performers. I found Rosalinde’s old
flame, Alfred, to be one of the funniest characters, delivering bits of
blockbuster arias (Una furtiva lagrima, Che gelida manina, Libiamo nei lieti
calici) in a parody of Italian opera that really elicited a few belly
laughs. This Italian tenor was hilariously portrayed by Lindell O. Carter,
who was 100% in character even in the recitatifs feigning a thick Italian accent.

Coloratura
soprano Rebecca Shorstein, in the role of Adele (the ambitious maid),
delivered some excellent and challenging singing although her acting was often
a tad too forceful, unnecessarily pushing the envelope into the slapstick side of
things. If only she toned it down a notch, she would have been perfect.
Mezzo-soprano Chelsea Laggan as Prince Orlofsky was the best
well-rounded performer, together with Ms. Newcomb. Hers is a pants role in which
she plays an ennuied and slightly despotic aristocrat who participates in the
prank with detached bemusement, all the while laying some heavy flirtation on
Adele. Ms. Laggan’s voice is velvety and her singing fluid and nuanced,
definitely a young artist to keep an eye on. Bass-baritone Costas Tsourakis played
Dr. Falke (the mastermind behind the joke) with commanding stage presence and a
deep, rich tone. Of lighter voice weight compared to Mr. Tsourakis,
bass-baritone Andrew Luzania was the prison guard Frank, who displayed
some pretty hilarious acting (particularly when he pretends to be a French aristocrat),
not to mention during his waltzes (with real like partners as well as with a
broom), and he also delivered generally solid singing.

The
NY Opera Exchange orchestra is a serious sized one (45 musicians), even more so
for an independent opera company. It was energetically led by conductor David
Leibowitz and, with the exception of a slightly disjointed overture that I’d
attribute to opening night jitters, delivered an impressive display of musical
firepower, bubbly and waltzy, the way it should be. Delicious! Costumes and
sets were also serious business and noteworthy for the level of polish,
inventiveness and cohesion, particularly for a company of this size.

All
in all, I was very impressed by the work of NY Opera Exchange that put together a
seriously entertaining operetta and left us wanting for more. Next in their
season is Lucia di Lammermoor and we’ll be curious to see how this young
company copes with our most beloved Donizetti.

“The Brainwashing of Omar” is what John Coolidge Adams’
controversial opera could have been called, at least in Tom Morris’ production
of it. Omar, the youngest and most impressionable of the terrorists who
hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise liner in 1984, is the glue between the
first and second act. The Klinghoffers aren’t even introduced until act two.
Played by the dancer Jesse Kovarsky, Omar provides not only the
continuity, but he also occupies the center of the dramatic tension. His
initially reluctant journey toward terrorist training and violence is recounted
over a series of intensely choreographed dance interludes that are interspersed
throughout the opera, which amount to many of the most exhilarating passages in
the piece. He is also the glue between the sequence of three scenes in which
the opera reaches its climax that this production stages so elegantly. The build
up to the murder takes us from Omar approaching poor Leon Klinghoffer in his
wheelchair from behind. Then we cut to an ecstatic chorus in which, according
to the synopsis, “Omar remembers the day he was inspired to die for his
beliefs.”

Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

In the next scene, our perspective has suddenly shifted, a move
unprecedented in most staged entertainment. We get a cinematic reverse shot.
Klinghoffer is now facing us and so Omar’s approach is now toward the audience.
As theater, it was an utterly unique sequence. And bang, just like that, the
deed is done. Klinghoffer dies right before us.

Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

And so the eponymous victim of the story is not even necessarily
the star of the show. The captain has the most vocal airtime and Tom Morris and
his choreographer Arthur Pita privilege Omar’s trajectory through the
event. But what is really striking about this opera is its ensemble cast
structure. Like a Robert Altman film, before the Klinghoffers are even
introduced, the international reality of the many passengers who remained on board
the cruise ship during the hijacking is brought to the fore. There are several
non-sequitur moments as the tensions heighten in Act I, like the Austrian woman
who locked herself in her room during the whole fiasco and managed to survive
on the fruit basket that happened to be in her room and the chocolates she
bought as a souvenir at a previous port of call in Greece. We also get the
story of a Swiss grandmother who is almost caught in the crossfire with her
frightened grandson in the dining room when the terrorists first strike. Rather
than focus on just one perspective, we are given a multiplicity of perspectives
on the action.

Photo credit: Met

This kind of narrative experimentation is not necessarily unique
in opera. One of the great things about classic operas is that you will often
find multiple characters all singing their feelings, all at the same time, in
multi-layered harmonies. Such experimentation is made possible in this piece by
the fact that many passages of the opera are told in flashback, which to me
simply does not work in opera. If a character steps up and simply declaims a
long-winded story to the audience without acting it out in real time much of
the emotional impact is lost. What the operatic stage demands is an immediacy
of emotion and action. If you distance the music from the action, the emotions
will inevitably suffer. Only by putting the singing into context are the
emotions most effectively heightened.

Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

So, the opera does several things that are unique to the art form.
One is the fragmentary way in which the story is told. But fragmenting the
story through these multiple perspectives only helps to thematize the fact that
Leon Klinghoffer was killed not because he was Jewish, but because he was
American. In the opera, as it seems to have been even in reality, the fact that
the victim was Jewish only seems to come up tangentially, if at all. He was
singled out with the Americans, Brits and Israelis because of the nationality
on his passport. It was pure chance that he just also happened to be Jewish.
That was beside the point for this rag-tag group of terrorists that is
portrayed as little more than a gang of amateurs who kind of botch the whole
thing, even though they apparently get off scot-free eventually in the end as
supertitles told us after the opera as we filed out of the house at the end of
the show.

Photo credit: Sarah Krulwich / New York Times

(What was with the terrorists disembarking and smiling and waving
goodbye to their captives like they were saying goodbye to a group of old
friends? Is this a commentary on how most of them got away with little or no
punishment? As the supertitles at the end of the opera remind us?)

Photo credit: Met

The music is, nevertheless, extremely beautiful throughout, and
conductor David Robertson did an excellent job in leading the Met
Orchestra through a score that, for a number of reasons, is not performed very
often. But still, you just can’t have people singing certain things. In the
captain’s opening monologue,poorBrazilian baritone Paulo
Szot has to sing awkwardly phrased abstractions like “comprehensive solitude.”
What does that even mean and do people even talk like that, and if not why
should they sing such multi-syllabled nonsense? I began to wonder if it wasn’t
a slightly fumbled translation of something from the captain’s diary like “solitudine
completa” or something to that effect, since he is after all Italian and the
libretto was supposed to be based at least in part on the historical record.

Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

With the score as beautiful as it so often is, I began to wonder
why librettist Alice Goodman and even the composer in his setting of the
text both insisted on going out their way to give the singers such ugly and
awkward lines to sing. Is it that this is a symptom of modernity? Do we have
late Verdi and Wagner to thank for giving us the gift of the sung-through opera
score? Now it would seem that nobody on stage can dare open their mouth and
have a something poetic to say or a melody to sing, let alone a rhetorical
flourish. Instead they struggle to put two words together that even an ordinary
person would speak. This was the case with last year’s Two Boys. In Klinghoffer,
however, even if one of the characters does rise to the occasion and is given
the musical wings to break out into poetic flights of song, the poetry somehow
gets bogged down. Why is it that Mamoud’s famous bird aria (here delivered with
a slight tingle of beauty by bass-baritone Aubrey Allicock)devolves
into a long list of bird species? “The eagle, the falcon, / The crow, and the
raven, / The sparrow, the wren, / The dove, the pigeon, / The stork, and the
heron, / Alike being clean / In the sight of Heaven.” Who talks like this?
Where is the poetry in such taxonomic flights of fancy? And what about Mrs.
Klinghoffer prattling on about modern medicine and joints and artificial limbs?
It was just weird and felt like such tangential discussions were included out
of bad taste.

Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

With all the polemic surrounding this event, one would expect the
opera to delve a little deeper into the trenches. Instead much of the opera is
really quite dull. Some of the captain’s loquacity is pretty useless, a bit
like the distracting bits with the detective and her mother in Two Boys.
I guess the ditzy British dancer serves her function as the offensive western
philistine, who is pretty clueless and has none of the convictions that the
terrorists or even Mr. and Mrs. Klinghoffer have, but that’s about it. She adds
only minor irritation to the opera, which is a shame because at its heart are
in fact human concerns of the highest order, no matter how quotidian and banal
they might be expressed. There is certainly a subtle critique of the West in
the mix.

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

And there is something to be said for the fact that the most intense,
exciting and easily the most thrilling music is found in the choruses of the
angry Palestinian exiles and in the solo by a Palestinian woman (mezzo-soprano Maya
Lahyani) who seems to represent Omar’s alter ego in the climactic “Desert
Chorus.” The opening and closing numbers of Act One are easily the most
exhilarating moments in the whole piece. Otherwise, this is one of those modern
operas with virtually no arias worth of such name that left me desperately
craving for melody. One would expect that at least the character of Leon
Klinghoffer would express some sort of tragic tension through voice but we were
not so lucky: baritone Alan Opie mostly angrily declaimed his lines in
an operatic voice with no real musicality to it, not even when he was about to
die.

Photo credit: Dylan Martinez

Photo credit: Met

Nevertheless, the opera concludes on a somber and, for once,
lyrical note and the last word is given to mezzo-soprano Michaela Martens as
the mourning Mrs. Klinghoffer who is distraught but also full of regret because
they didn’t pick her. She hints the fact that she herself is already afflicted
with the fatal illness that would take her life just a short time later, and
her husband, though wheelchair bound, nevertheless always managed against all
odds to keep a great attitude about life. She was the one who should have died
she says. Because this way he would not have died in vain. Because the world did
not take note and his death did not make the world sit up and notice what was
going on since it really elicited so little attention from the international
community. She sings:

“If a hundred / People were murdered / And their blood / Flowed in
the wake / Of this ship like / Oil, only then / Would the world intervene. /
They should have killed me. / I wanted to die.”

Only if more people had been killed would anybody bother to
notice, she sings at the end. Ultimately, this is the gift that the opera gives.
It is a monument to one of the many innocent and virtually forgotten victims of
a conflict that continues to rage on leaving countless unidentified and
publicly unmemorialized victims like Leon Klighoffers in its wake. This is the
story of one whose name will indelibly remain.

Tonight revisiting Carmen, I was reminded why it’s such a
blockbuster. With nine hundred and ninety two performances at the Met alone,
Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera is immensely and effortlessly entertaining. It
features wonderful music at every turn with a variety of different themes and
Spanish-tinged melodies that are always fiery and pleasant to the ear. In terms
of the plot, which is linear and very easy to follow, this is not an opera of
nuance – dutiful, good-boy soldier falls for beautiful, free-spirited gypsy,
who (maybe) loves him back (for a bit), drags him into an adventurous life of
danger as an outlaw smuggler; soldier is not really made for this, but is crazy
about his gypsy, while torn by remorse for not being close to his loving mother
and not behaving like a good citizen; enter hot, free-spirited torero
who whisks the beautiful gypsy away; soldier goes crazy with jealousy and stabs
gypsy to death.

Photo credit: Met

Although the story may be simple, the music is complex and
multi-faceted and brings different themes alive with immediacy, power and
expressiveness. Often times Bizet’s score switches the musical mood several
times within a single scene to emphasize the various strands that are all going
on at once so that in the span of only a few minutes the tone will change from
celebratory to dangerous to loving, and then back to festive, really
illustrating how the unity of the plot consists of a multiplicity of ideas that
all work together beautifully.

Photo credit: Met

Young, passionate and energetic, Pablo Heras-Casado is the
perfect conductor for Carmen, not the least because of his obvious Spanish
sensibility, particularly evident in the opening of Act IV, which musically was
one of the highlights of the evening. It is a fiery and breathtaking piece of
music that conjures an intensely passionate mood in preparation for the
emotional climax to come in the finale. Heras-Casado kept the whole opera
moving at a brisk pace, distilling every nuance of the wonderful Bizet score.
He really brought it to life for me like never before and made me realize that
the music may actually be the true, and certainly the most complex, protagonist
here.

Photo credit: Hioryuki Ito / NYT

Georgian mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili is a force of nature, a
veritable stage animal. Her acting was fierce, aggressive and sensual, as a
Carmen should be and maybe even more – the intensity of her passion when initiating
intercourse with Don Jose on a table caused a lot of tableware to fall to the
ground (which was a realistic yet distracting effect). The rawness of her
acting contrasted somehow with her singing, which was surprisingly graceful,
and fluid throughout, almost nonchalant, a bit lacking in the guttural,
expressive intensity that one would expect from a Carmen. She did achieve peaks
of tragic passion in Act IV’s final confrontation with Don Jose, actually
sending some shivers down my spine. Rachvelishvili was incredibly mobile on
stage and also a great dancer, particularly in Acts II and III, where really
embodied the gypsy nature of her character. This singer’s very physical stage
presence was evident when we discovered her in Price Igor last year, but she was
even more striking in this Bizet role that seems to have become her signature
part since her La Scala debut in 2009.

Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Soprano Anita Hartig was an impressive Micaela, the loving
good girl tending to Don Jose’s sick mother. Her character is Gilda-like and Hartig
conveyed it with an angelic purity and innocence while at the same time soaring
and effortlessly filling the space more than any of her other colleagues on
stage. She left me wanting to hear more from her and I will look forward to
seeing her again in a leading role in the future. Bass IldarAbdrazakov
exuded charisma as Escamillo. His entrance in Act II was a showstopper and a
pleasure for the eyes and the ears alike. No wonder Carmen dumps that moping
Don Jose for this sexy toreador, really a no brainer, especially when
Abdrazakov is singing the role! Tenor AleksandrsAntonenko as Don
Jose was passable once he warmed up a bit and as long as he avoided high notes.
I am just not crazy about the sound of his voice, particularly in the higher
register. Though his sound can be grating on the ears, when he is in the young,
naive and in love stage of his early character development, he was easier to
palate, especially in the last two acts of the opera when he grows more jaded
and angry at the world.

Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Frasquita and Mercedes may be minor roles but Kiri Deonarine
and Jennifer Johnson Cano did an excellent job in bringing these two
gypsies to life with verve and lightheartedness, while at the same time being
vocally very strong and displaying great acting skills, they both left me
wishing to see more from their characters. The Met’s chorus was as usual
excellent, with a special mention for the kids’ section that was particularly
delightful and fresh.

Photo credit: Beatriz Schiller

Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Rob Howell’s sets were essential and raw, with a circular crumbly stone-like
structure serving as backbone for most of the opera, complemented by gates
surrounding the square (Act I), Pastia’s bar and dance floor (Act II),
mountainous elements (Act III) and the street outside the plaza de toros (Act IV). The simple decadence of the sets made them
somehow a-temporal in a very refreshing way. It seems like one of director Richard
Eyre’s signature moves is to imbue his overtures with a little does of
stage action (think of this year’s Nozze). Here he chose to have each
act’s overture/prelude punctuated by a couple of dancers performing the
different stages of Carmen and Don Jose’s love story, which was a nice touch,
particularly with red lighting that emphasized the violence and passion flowing
through the opera. The direction was all in all pretty straightforward, with
some particularly effective ideas in Act IV. The parallel between Carmen as a
force of nature who needs taming and the bull whom matador arrives in the
parade to strike down is really pounded into the audience full force in this
production:

As Escamillo enters in full regalia on his way to the bullring,
the chorus sings a metatextual reflection of what happens in the final seconds
of the drama. And the last image Eyre leaves us with is a split-frame glimpse
of the corpse of Carmen on one side of the stage and her virtual mirror image
in the cadaver of the bull that is revealed once the circular stage spins open
and the bullring after the bullfight is brought into view. Like the sacrificial
bull, Carmen has been laid low, her carefree toying with men’s emotions has
back to haunt her. And the story spins full circle.